Historic Trial Transcripts

Manson Family Member Testifies on Tate Killings
By Douglas Robinson Special to The New York Times

LOS ANGELES, July 28—The star prosecution witness in the murder trial of Charles M. Manson and three of his hippie band tearfully described today what she said were details of the killing of five persons in Los Angeles last year.
The witness, Mrs. Linda Kasabian, was racked with sobs as, she testified how she said several of Manson’s followers stabbed and shot their victims to death.
“It was unbelievably terribly horrible,” she told a hushed courtroom. “I saw a man coming out the front door with blood all over his face.
“We looked into each others eyes, and I said ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ Then he fell into the bushes.”
Mrs. Kasabian, a former member of Manson’s communal “family” who is testifying under a grant of immunity, related how the group arrived in the middle of the night at the home of Sharon Tate, the actress, in a dark, isolated canyon a few miles north of Beverly Hills.
Phone Wires Were Cut
“Tex [Charles D. Watson, who is in custody in Texas and is fighting extradition to Los Angeles] cut the telephone wires,” she said. “Then a car came down the driveway and he told us duck.
“When the car came close, Tex stepped out with a revolver in his hand and put it in the window. I heard a man shout, ‘Please don’t hurt me, I won’t tell anyone.’ Then Tex fired four shots into the man and he slumped to the seat of the car.”
A few minutes later, Mrs. Kasabian said, the group broke into the house and she was sent back to the car as a look out.
“I heard screams come from the house—the voices of men and women—pleading for their lives,” she said. She said she ran to the house and saw several people being stabbed by her companions.
Manson and three young women—Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Denise Atkins and Leslie Van Houten—are being tried for the murders of seven per sons, five at the Tate house and two the following night in a home in another part of Los Angles.
100 Interruptions
Mrs. Kasabian’s testimony about the murders and the events leading up to them at the Spahn movie ranch where Manson and his band lived was interrupted more than 100 times during the morning by Irving A. Kanarek, Manson’s attorney, who objected to almost every question.
On a number of occasions Superior Court Judge Charles H. Older ordered Mr. Kanarek to take his seat and to stop interrupting the witness. The attorney would comply briefly, only to jump from his seat seconds later to offer other objections.
The main thrust of Mrs. Kasabian’s testimony during the morning was that Manson dominated life on the Spahn ranch and that his followers would do anything he asked, including participating in sexual orgies and engaging in sexual relations with male visitors.
“I never saw anyone disobey Charlie,” she said. “We all wanted to do what he said.”
The witness also recounted how Manson grew increasingly insistent that the time for a war, between blacks and whites was growing nearer. Some of the male members of the hippie “family,” she said, were posted as armed guards “to keep the Black Panthers from spying on us.”
“Charlie told us we were superwhites and that the blacks were aware of this,” she said. “He said they wanted to do away with us because they knew we were going out to a hole in the desert.”
Beatles’ Record Cited
Mrs. Kasabian made several references to “Helter Skelter,” the title of a recorded song by the Beatles, and said that Manson believed it was a term for the forthcoming revolution between blacks and whites.
“Charlie said that blackie wanted Helter Skelter to start and that blackie was more aware than whitie,” she testified. “He said blackie was really together and that whitey was inclined to go off on side trips.”
The witness also told how Manson had once taken her out in the woods near the Spahn ranch. “He took me in his arms,” she related, “and said, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ When I said no, he just smiled and swung me around.”
On another occasion, when Manson was talking to his followers about the government, Mrs. Kasabian quoted him as saying that “they’re not going to crucify me this time as they did the last time.”
So fearful was Manson of blacks visiting the ranch, she said, that all the followers were ordered to wear dark clothing at night. She said the hippie leader was afraid the Black Panthers would try to shoot horses in the corral at night.
On the afternoon of Aug. 8, the night that Miss Tate and four other persons were murdered in an isolated home in a canyon north of Beverly Hills, Mrs. Kasabian said that Manson had returned from a trip “to Big Sur or somewhere.”
‘Now Was the Time’
“He told us that the white people were all just going off on side trips and that now was the time for Helter Skelter,” she said.
After supper that night, she continued, “Charlie pulled me off the porch and told me to get a change of clothing, a knife and my driver’s license.” She said it took her some time to get the items, but that eventually she went out to where Manson was standing beside the car.
“He told me to get in and I did,” she said. “Tex Watson [Charles D. Watson, a “family” member now in custody in Texas who is fighting extradition to Los Angeles], Sadie and Katie were also there. I was told to do everything Tex told me to do.”
She explained that Sadie was the nickname for Miss Atkins and that Miss Krenwinkel was known by the “family” as Katie.
“Katie and Sadie were in the back seat,” Mrs. Kasabian went on. “Tex was driving and I was in the front seat on the passenger side. We started to pull out of the driveway when Charlie called to us to stop. He came up to the car window, leaned over and said:
“’Leave a sign. The girls know what I mean—something witchy.’”